Mindful eating involves paying full attention to the experience of fueling your body - inside & out, allowing you to fully appreciate the food you eat & absorb all the goodness that it's meant to provide you.

It not only helps you to build a healthy relationship with food & your body, it also works wonder for your digestion & increases the level of satisfaction you feel after eating.

1. It is one billion percent possible to recover from an eating disorder and live an extraordinary life that is not consumed with thoughts of food, exercise, weight, macros, calories, etc.

2. Every struggle you endure, every relapse, every feeling of discomfort… they are all crucial in shaping you into who you want to be in the future.

3. It is totally possible to be struggling and relapsing harder than you ever have one day and then the next realize that you are so totally over hating yourself and your body and move on to the next phase of recovery

4. Recovery is a series of self-tests. There were definitely times when I had convinced myself I was over something, and then when it came time to face it I would be struck with fear. In order to distinguish whether those fears were real or if they were reminiscent from the past I had to purposely put myself in the situations that used to scare me. There come times in recovery when you’ve gotta call your own bullshit and prove to yourself that you have WON.

5. You don’t have to justify anything you eat. Ever.

6. You don’t decide your body’s ideal “set point” weight.

7. In a lot of ways recovery is about becoming soft. Not only physically in terms of a little extra flesh but mentally and emotionally as well. It’s about allowing yourself to drop the facade of being 100% perfect and in control of your life. It’s about letting yourself cry because you’re having a bad day or because you’re so happy to be finally living again. It’s about learning to be okay with being vulnerable, emotional, feminine and fragile. You’re not a stone. Just as you have a body, you have a heart and a soul and a beautiful mind. Embrace all of them. Get to know all of them. Treat all of them with respect. Don’t be afraid to be soft.

8. Intuitive eating is different for every single person on the planet. Any rules applied to eating take away any “intuitiveness” from the equation.

9. As you continue on your road to recovery you begin to realize that the old you isn’t really a stranger, but rather an old friend waiting on the other side of the darkness with an outstretched hand.

10. Appearance, weight, inpatient/outpatient….none of those things are sole indicators of whether or not you have an eating disorder and/or deserve to get help. Eating disorders are MENTAL illnesses.

11. What people think of you won’t actually change how you feel about yourself. At the end of the day, all you have is you…. so the only opinion of yourself that matters is your own.

12. Recovery is a process. It takes time. Breaking your arm takes a fraction of a second, but healing it takes months in a cast. Knocking down a house takes minutes, but building one takes days, even weeks. You can’t recover overnight. There is no magic fix-it button. Recovery takes time, patience, understanding, work, and a hell of a lot of unconditional love…but it’s 100% worth it.

13. You’ll be dead before you’re ever “sick enough”.

14.NOBODY CARES HOW MUCH YOU WEIGH..and there is no way they can know unless they weigh you or you tell them.

15. The only way to have a perfect body is to realize that you already have a perfect body.

16. Your worth is dictated by nothing other than the fact that you are here. You are more or no less worthy than anyone else. We are all inherently worthy.

17. Labeling foods as bad or off limits does nothing but confuse the hell out of your brain. It cannot understand why something crucial for survival is being feared or avoided.

18. Nobody has the power to hurt your feeling except you.

19. We are not our bodies. We are beings. We are spirits. We are energy. We are free.

20. When it comes to living with an eating disorder, the more you think you are in control, the less you are actually in control.

21. You don’t want to be 60 years old and explaining to your grand kids why you’re measuring out the peanut butter for your PB&J or weighing your cornflakes.

22. A much as you may think you’re just “not like other people” when it comes to being normal about food and having a body you can be content with…you’re wrong.

23. How much you ate yesterday or what size of pants you wear or how full you feel or how many tummy rolls you have or how many cookies you eat…..none of that is going to matter when you’re 80 years old and looking back on your life.

24. The strongest warriors aren’t necessarily the ones who have never been defeated.

25. Mental illness does not make you weak. It’s not easy living day in and day out with someone who is trying to kill you and keep you alive at the same time. You are not weak. You are stronger than most.

26. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. It knows what it’s doing.

27. Breaking disordered habits is like having to quit a hundred different drugs cold turkey. You literally just have to decide to stop each of them one at a time.

28. Healthy is different for everyone. Some people can be extremely slim and still have their period and eat normally, while others have to have a little more fat for their hormones to work properly. Health is not defined by a certain BMI or number on the scale. It cannot be measured by the size of your jeans or by how happy you appear on the outside. Health is unique to each individual. The best thing you can do for yourself is to allow yourself to be healthy and to love yourself in that state, no matter what

29. It’s not about the food, it’s not about your body, it’s not about what other people think or how you look or how you think you feel when you look a certain way or do a certain thing… No. At the end of the day it’s all comes down to how much you love yourself. If you don’t love and accept yourself 100%, you will NEVER have the perfect body, yo will never be small enough or smart enough or pretty enough or fit enough. You’ll never love yourself “when…” if you don’t love yourself now.

30. I was meant to fight this battle and face these demons, for now I am stronger than ever and available to help others in conquering theirs.